A sexual molestation case involving Josh Duggar, the reality TV star and former high-ranking employee of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, has dominated national news for more than a week as continuing revelations suggest the teen and his family may have received preferential treatment from authorities.

TLC has suspended airings of the family’s “19 Kids and Counting” program, but it has not yet been canceled despite the loss of several major advertisers.

According to Washington Post; the Islamic State (ISIS) said Friday that it was behind a blast that killed or wounded scores of worshipers at a Shiite mosque in Saudi Arabia, marking the first time the militant group has claimed an attack in the oil-rich kingdom and raising fears of an expanding sectarian conflict in the region.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi authorities on the Islamic State’s assertion of responsibility, which was carried in written and audio statements distributed by accounts linked with the Islamic State on Twitter.

International Business Times - Shiite Muslim worshipers in eastern Saudi Arabia were the target of a suicide bombing Friday, the second deadly attack in six months against the kingdom’s religious minority sect. It was not immediately clear how many people were killed in the bombing, butmedia reportssuggest that as many as 20 have been confirmed dead, with as many as 50 wounded. The attack came as worshipers were gathering to commemorate the seventh-century birth of the revered Shiite figure Imam Hussein against the backdrop of increasing public scrutiny of Shiite practices in the conservative Sunni kingdom.

Shiites make up approximately 15 percent of the kingdom’s population of nearly 29 million. The minority group is primarily concentrated in the country’s oil-rich Eastern Province, which includes some Shiite-majority districts, including Qatif, where Friday’s bombing took place. In November, eight Shiite worshipers were killed in a shooting in the Eastern Province village of al Ahsa, an attack that was attributed to the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS.

According to The Local, Norway has scrapped its longstanding blasphemy law, meaning it is now legal to mock the beliefs of others, in a direct response to January’s brutal attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The proposal to rush through the change was made in February by Conservative MP Anders B. Werp and Progress Party MP Jan Arild Ellingsen, who argued that the law “underpins a perception that religious expressions and symbols are entitled to a special protection”.

“This is very unfortunate signal to send, and it is time that society clearly stands up for freedom of speech,” the two wrote in their proposal.

Norway’s parliament first voted to scrap the blasphemy law back in 2009, against strong opposition from the Christian Democrat party. But the move has yet to come into force because the country’s new penal code remains delayed by problems updating the computer systems used by police and prosecutors.

According Raw Story, TLC has pulled the plug on its long-running reality show, “19 Kids and Counting,” over revelations that stars Jim Bob and Michelle Duggarcovered up their son’s molestationof his sisters and other girls.

The network hascanceled all airings of the programfrom its schedule after Josh Duggar – the eldest son of the 21-member evangelical Christian family – admitted this week to “inexcusable” actions 12 years ago, when he was a teenager.

Police in Arkansas, where the family lives, said Duggar had fondled the breasts and vaginas of multiple young girls, sometimes as they slept, around 2002.

His father, a former Republican state lawmaker and failed U.S. Senate candidate, posted on Facebook this week, after the claims surfaced, that his son had “made some very bad mistakes” – but the experience had drawn the family “closer to God.”

Oh hey, let’s hate on other Christians. This will surely drive new members into our congregation.

According to Religion Dispatches, as reported by the local Fox television affiliate in Phoenix, eight traditionalist churches in the suburb of Fountain Hills, Ariz., have combined forces to work against “Progressive Christianity” and its beliefs

American Christianity is coming apart at the seams, which is not quite right. However, it does reflect some of the ways in which the faith is changing.

As the Christian pool in American society shrinks, it’s likely to becomebothmore conservativeand more liberal.

There’s only one problem: literally just down the street from one of the conservative churches, there’s a self-described “progressive Christian” congregation,Fountains United Methodist Church.

Call it a faith fight: religion is at the center of a controversy brewing in Fountain Hills. It seems some traditional Christian churches are at odds with what's being labeled as "Progressive Christianity."

That community is known for stunning scenery, retirees and high-end homes -- religion took center stage when banners started showing up Tuesday on eight traditional Christian churches in the area.

Think Progress - For almost a year now, the nation has been locked in almost constant debate over various state and federal versions of the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA), a 20-year-old law that was broadened by the Supreme Court in 2014 and has since been embraced by right-wing politicians and pundits — especially religious conservatives. But in an unusual twist, an atheist activist is galvanizing support for a legal campaign to use the federal RFRA to remove the phrase “In God we trust” from U.S. coins and paper bills.

Michael Newdow, whounsuccessfully suedto have “Under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance in 2004,published a guest poston the The Friendly Atheist blog last Friday outlining a new initiative to challenge the decades-old policy of printing the religiously themed American national motto on U.S. currency. He explained that while courts have dismissed claims that the phrase violates theEstablishment Clauseof the U.S. Constitution — which prohibits Congress from passing laws that establish one religion above others — his new legal argument is rooted in RFRA’s stipulation that religious activity cannot be “substantially burdened” without a “compelling government interest.” The government’s interest in emblazoning currency with “in God we trust,” Newdow argues, is suspect.

In 2012, Pitzer College introduced the first secular studies program in the United States. Directed by sociology professor Phil Zuckerman, the program offers several courses - and a major - enabling students to understand secularism from a historical, philosophical and sociological perspective. The program attracts many different students; during an interview last year, Zuckerman said the program attracts its fair share of theists, who usually develop a more nuanced view of what it means to be an atheist (for more see)

However, as Zuckerman admitted, Pitzer’s groundbreaking program has one major shortcoming: it lacks courses devoted to scientific cosmology. That shortcoming, however, is being addressed at UC Berkeley, Pitzer’s neighbor to the north. “Origins: From the Big Bang to the Emergence of Human Beings,” a Big Ideas Course I took last semester as a Berkeley freshman, offers a wonderful overview of both scientific cosmology and evolutionary biology.

During the first part of the course, students learn about the formation of the universe and the origin of the elements, which were created by nuclear fusion inside stars. They understand why, as Carl Sagan famously said, we are all made of stardust. Students also learn the five key theoretical steps required for the origin of life: the making of building blocks, restricting these building blocks to a certain environment, separating the inside of the cell from the outside, replicating the cells, and harnessing the energy.

New Republic - LAST DECEMBER, DAR AL IFTA, a venerable Cairo-based institution charged with issuing Islamic edicts, cited an obscure poll according to which the exact number of Egyptian atheists was 866. The poll provided equally precise counts of atheists in other Arab countries: 325 in Morocco, 320 in Tunisia, 242 in Iraq, 178 in Saudi Arabia, 170 in Jordan, 70 in Sudan, 56 in Syria, 34 in Libya, and 32 in Yemen. In total, exactly 2,293 nonbelievers in a population of 300 million.

Many commentators ridiculed these numbers. The Guardian asked Rabab Kamal, an Egyptian secularist activist, if she believed the 866 figure was accurate. “I could count more than that number of atheists at Al Azhar University alone,” she replied sarcastically, referring to the Cairo-based academic institution that has been a center of Sunni Islamic learning for almost 1,000 years. Brian Whitaker, a veteran Middle East correspondent and the author of Arabs Without God, wrote, “One possible clue is that the figure for Jordan (170) roughly corresponds to the membership of a Jordanian atheist group on Facebook. So it’s possible that the researchers were simply trying to identify atheists from various countries who are active in social media.”

Accreditations

Visit AAI on Social Networks

Join AAI

AAI is a non-profit international organization registered in California, USA as a 501(c)(3) US corporation. We survive on your donations and support. Click here to VOLUNTEER your time or click here to DONATE to Atheist Alliance International.

Disclaimer: AAI content and links may be from other Internet sources and should be viewed with discreation. AAI reserves full indemity for all content, links, and assumes no liability for media on other websites. AAI does not permit discrimination. Contact AAI immediately for any questions or requests regarding AAI website media.